


FftF -- Extras

by JadeLavellan (Jadestone)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Cassandra - Freeform, Cole - Freeform, Dorian - Freeform, F/M, Gen, also present but not enough to get character tags:
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 15:41:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5211404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadestone/pseuds/JadeLavellan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things related to my Fallout from the Fade fic</p>
            </blockquote>





	FftF -- Extras

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Chapter 19.
> 
> Prompt from [kayla-bird](kayla-bird.tumblr.com): "ok but also what if: the ritual isn't interrupted. and hawke realizes just as it takes hold that she's managed to recreate the rite of tranquility"
> 
> On tumblr [here](http://maythedreadwolftakeyou.tumblr.com/post/132971528369/ok-but-also-what-if-the-ritual-isnt-interrupted).

Hawke sprawls on the floor, convulsing as the blood magic ripples through her. She was so prepared, she had studied so much, how could this be happening? Her spell pushes through her like a force of nature: an avalanche, a wildfire, a hurricane. Magic she can’t contain sputters from her fingertips and races up her skin, and all she is able to do is gasp for air as it surges through her.   
How long? is the only thing she can manage to wonder. How long before a demon finds me, and a way in?

An eternity winds through the space of a moment, and she is sure that now, now, any moment now, the Fear-memories will take full control, that she will be trapped forever. And inside her, the blood-magic barriers she’d begun to erect stitch themselves ever more firmly into place, with a force greater and heavier than she would have dared attempt on her own. The spell she’d worked to seal herself away tangles around the pieces of her mind, wrapping up the parts of herself she was attempting to sever. Tears of pain and fear spill from her eyes to the stones below, her muscles spasming involuntarily as the magic fires and collapses the nerve endings in her brain.

And then, with a last faint breath of sparks and frost, she feels her magic disappear; a tiny light inside her heart she had never realized was there winking out like a forgotten star.  
The spell is completed.

Hawke has only a few moments to process what is happening to her. The first thing she feels is relief, that she has not accidentally killed herself after all, that she is not an unholy abomination who will wreak havoc on all the sad souls trapped in this fortress. 

The second thing she feels is amazement, at the sudden silence in her mind. Nothing. There is nothing, and no one but her. The memories are gone—or at least, she no longer can sense them in anyway. They don’t overlay her vision with terrible scenes of blood and despair; they don’t whisper their tragedies against her skin. For the first time in months, she is blissfully, utterly alone.  
And the last thing she feels, already slow and fading in the single breath it takes for the full effects of what she has done to take control, is a dim and resigned regret. Regret that it had come to this, of all things, what she had feared and run from for so long. That it had happened this way, after fighting, when she could not take back those terrible last words. Regret that, after all her efforts, the spell had actually worked—that this was truly the end. 

Outlasting each of those more fleeting feelings, struggling to endure despite everything she has told herself, are the deepest deeper pieces of her heart—her love, her strength, her fierce and protective devotion, even in the face of annihilation. But there is no retreating from what she has done, and by the time she exhales, they are snuffed away. A shadow sorrow at the memory of their loss lingers for a mere moment, the smoke from an extinguished candle, but then that, too, is gone.

Hawke stops crying.

She is no longer connected to the Fade.

The door bursts open a moment later, and Dorian strides in, magic already crackling up his arms. But it is too late, and he swears violently in Tevine as he sinks to his knees beside her on the floor. He pulls Hawke up, her body too weak and exhausted for her to do more than shake uncontrollably in his arms.   
“I’m so sorry,” he babbles as his healing spells begin to repair her mangled flesh. “I should have realized, I should have come sooner. What were you thinking?” His usual mask of calm amusement has been utterly washed away, replaced with guilt and anger.

“I am fine,” Hawke tells him, because he is seemingly upset. “None of my wounds are fatal.”

He stares at her in disbelief, an unbelieving horror slowly dawning in his eyes. He grabs her roughly by the shoulders as he stares at her, spells rolling from his hands and sliding uselessly away from her as she blankly returns his gaze.  
“No,” he whispers, “No, no. How did you do this? What have you done?”  
“I used a spell to cut myself from the Fade,” she tells him. Hawke is not sure what he means when he closes his eyes in anguish. She does know that she is tired, so tired. It would be better to sleep.

She closes her eyes.

 

__________

 

Hawke wakes in the infirmary, a healer tentatively pressing one hand to her forehead. They have taken her bloody clothes and replaced them with a robe of clean, soft cotton. 

Someone is holding her hand, clutching it tightly between their fingers. She turns her head. Fenris sits in a chair next to the bed she is reclined on, slumped over in exhaustion and eyes closed. A large purple bruise discolors one of his cheekbones. It looks unnecessarily painful, given the presence of the healer even now trying to check her vitals. A glass of water is pressed to her lips, and Hawke drinks it, obediently.

“You should have that healed,” she tells him mildly when she is done.  
Fenris starts himself fully awake, panic instantly contorting his face. The chair scrapes backwards across the floor as he surges to his feet, all but pushing the medic aside as he leans above her.

“Hawke,” he begs her, low and insistent. “What happened? Are you all right?” 

“I am fine,” she tells him calmly, and his face crumples. “I was attempting a spell, and it was successful in the end.”

His hand slackens its grip in stunned horror, and she lets her hand fall back onto the bed.

“Why are you talking like that?” he demands, taking slow steps back from her, shaking his head. “No, no. You wouldn’t do this.”

“I don’t understand—” Hawke begins, but before she can finish, he flees the room, storming back into the Keep.

The room is quiet. Hawke closes her eyes, and falls back into slumber.

 

__________

 

The next time she wakes, Cassandra is striding into the room, followed by a bedraggled-looking Fenris and Dorian. 

“—cannot believe it,” she is snapping aloud as they enter.

Hawke sits up as they walk in, and the Seeker walks right up to the foot of her bed, glaring. Dorian looks tired; his robes uncharacteristically wrinkled, his lip cut open as though someone had struck him.

“Champion,” Cassandra greets her shortly. “Dorian tells me he found you doing some spell, and insists you were made Tranquil as a result. I do not think even you could be so foolish to attempt such a thing. Tell me what happened.”

“Dorian is correct,” Hawke replies. “I cut myself off from the Fade.”

Cassandra can’t appear to say anything, her mouth opening and closing without a single word issuing forth. 

Hawke turns to the others, and tells them, “You two shouldn’t fight.”

No one replies, and none of them stay in her room for very long.

 

__________

 

“You will need the space for other patients,” Hawke explains to the healer by the end of the day. “I need no more medical attention. I can return to my former room.”

“There is no one else who needs the bed right now,” the woman tells her, eyes tired. “Please. It will be best for everyone if you just stay here for now.”

“If you wish,” Hawke agrees amiably.

 

__________

 

Fenris comes back first, sitting in his chair and silently holding her hand, head bowed, avoiding her gaze. He does not say anything to her, so she does not speak either. A little while later, Cassandra also returns, carrying the heavy book Hawke had stolen from her private quarters. She is followed by the young, ragged boy who had spoken to her before. Cole. He looks startled to see her watching him, so she smiles placidly, although it does not seem to help.

“Can you reach her?” Cassandra asks him, ignoring Hawke. “I know it is usually done from behind the Vail, not on this side of it, but since you are a spirit of Compassion…”

He frowns, eyebrows knitted together under his overlarge hat. “I can try,” he tells them all. Fenris is sitting up again now, regarding them all warily. “But I haven’t done this before.”

“Will it hurt her?” The elf asks from her side, clutching her hand between his own. His grip is painfully tight, and she tugs her hand. He does not let go, but loosens his hold, so she stops.

“I don’t know,” Cole says, at the same time Cassandra replies with “Probably very much so.”

They look at Hawke.

“I don’t think you can reverse it,” she tells them. 

“Don’t say that, Hawke,” Fenris whispers, dropping to his knees beside her bed. “We can fix this. This isn’t how you would have wanted it.”

“It was,” she says, but no one listens.

Cole is at her side now, his fingers pressed to her temples, and she waits patiently. It is only a few minutes before he drops his hands, confused.

“Reaching, but empty, like trying to catch a reflection. I can’t find her.” He frowns, staring intently into Hawke’s eyes. “Where did you go?”

“Cole. She’s right here,” Cassandra replies, voice tired. “Can you heal her or not?”

He shook his head. “No. She locked herself away, like hiding in a maze of mirrors.”  
“Yes,” Hawke agrees. “I knew you’d try to bring me back otherwise, so I sealed away the part of my mind the Fade used to touch.”

There is a stunned silence in the room.

“Is that even possible?” Cassandra whispers to herself. 

Fenris only stares, unspeaking. 

“Dorian said you were using blood magic. I did not think it true but…” the Seeker trails off.

Tears are running down Fenris’ face openly now, falling onto the thin white sheets of her bed. “Why?” is all he will whisper, voice cracking. “After everything we saw. After  _Leandra_. Why?”

“Is there anything else you want to know?” Hawke asks them blandly.

 

__________

 

They let Hawke return to her old room, eventually. They others appear discontented when she walks about the Keep, even when she makes sure to smile calmly, so she has taken to staying in her room. Fenris comes and goes, clearly upset by her presence, but unwilling to stay away. 

“Perhaps you would be more comfortable in another room,” she suggests to him one week.

Fenris throws a plate against the wall, and stalks out the door almost before the fragments can hit the floor. Hawke sweeps them up. He comes back within the hour, eyes red. He kneels before where she sits placidly on the bed, searching her eyes for something they both no is no longer there.

“Please, come back,” he begs her.

“I am right here,” Hawke tells him. 

He rests his head against her knees, and softly, begins to weep.

**Author's Note:**

> to be honest I can't tell if this is worse or less sad than the actual chapter 20


End file.
